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Dave Krieger: Revenge of the ex-cons

By Dave Krieger

Posted:
01/20/2018 07:50:50 PM MST

Maura Clare, left, in happier days, was invited by former faculty director Jim Palmer, center, to march in the 2014 conference procession, Palmer's last as director. Palmer is speaking with Kathleen Sebelius, former secretary of health and human services, that year's keynote speaker. At right are Chancellor Phil DiStefano and Jane Butcher, former conference chair. (Mark Leffingwell / BOULDER DAILY CAMERA)

Dave Krieger Editorial Page Editor

For the University of Colorado, the timing was auspicious. Just as #MeToo and #TimesUp were gaining traction last fall, CU quietly settled an age and gender discrimination claim by the longtime staff director of the Conference on World Affairs.

Among the allegations in Maura Clare's lawsuit: that the younger male hired to replace her was paid $108,000, $33,000 more than the $75,000 salary she earned. The university gave him a different title, but they were both the CWA's top staffer. Once again, CU's pious words in support of women's rights were betrayed by its behavior.

"Take a look at the timing," documentary filmmaker and former CWA panelist David Bender wrote in an email. "The university settled Ms. Clare's suit in November, just as the issue of the personal and professional mistreatment of women — including gender-based pay inequality — completely changed the rules of the game.

"I witnessed, in real time, how badly Ms. Clare was treated by her male superiors in 2015. Through it all, in the true spirit of the original Conference on World Affairs, she was the epitome of professionalism and grace under fire. As to the university, shame on them for perpetuating institutional misogyny. Their refusal to accept responsibility for their reprehensible treatment of Ms. Clare is unsurprising. I have two words for them: Time's Up."

Jim Palmer, the popular CU film studies professor who supervised Clare as faculty director of the CWA, was in her corner throughout the ordeal.

"There is clearly something broken at the university when fairness must be litigated at such length. May we hope that her case will serve as a benchmark for CU administrators and academic leaders to do the right thing in treating all women employees with equity and dignity. In Maura Clare's case, she was, for me and many others, an especially accomplished and creative colleague at the Conference on World Affairs."

When Clare referred, in a statement to the Camera, "to dear friends who have circled me with kindness and encouragement," she was talking mostly about a tight-knit group of volunteers, staff and supporters who were ousted or walked away from the CWA in 2015, and panelists from around the world who announced a boycott of the 2016 conference as a result of the CU administration's heavy-handed takeover of conference management.

They call themselves the ex-cons, "cons" in this case short not for convicts — although some of them felt that way — but "conference," as in the venerable free marketplace of ideas founded by CU sociology professor Howard Higman in 1948. Higman gained national prominence for himself and the CWA with his denunciations of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

Most prominent among the casualties of 2015 was Clare, who led the small paid staff and large army of student and community volunteers that invited and organized panelists who came on their own dimes from all over the world. Scattered around the country, the ex-cons cheered Tuesday when the Daily Camera reported CU agreed in November to pay her a year's salary to settle her lawsuit.

"Hearing she won was awesome and I'm really glad this slog is over for her," said Piper Jackson-Sevy, who worked for Clare first as a CU student volunteer and later as a staff member. "I know it was incredibly emotionally draining and was kind of pinning her down here and preventing her from being able to go on with her life, which I can't imagine, because I would hate to be thinking about the conference every day still. It's a terrible and painful memory."

Many of those who walked away from the CWA in sympathy with Clare and former conference chair Jane Butcher still have no idea why the university did what it did.

"The conference was not broken," Larry Gold, the legendary Boulder biotechnology entrepreneur and longtime CU professor, wrote in an email. "It was the best thing at CU. Every year. For bewildering reasons, the administration decided to change the conference management. Those reasons were not explained to anyone's satisfaction.

"One reason the conference was so great was Maura Clare. She was glue. Year after year. She should still be part of the conference. I am happy that CU settled with Maura. She was a great part of something grand."

In her lawsuit, Clare's lawyer, Theresa Corrada, offered a theory.

"Despite the extraordinary value and success of the CWA, the President of the University of Colorado, Bruce Benson, and the conservative Republican regents viewed the CWA as a 'festival of liberals' that was obstructing one of their primary goals — to promote right-wing conservative thought on the UCB campus," she wrote in the lawsuit.

"Benson detested the CWA so much that he refused to lead the opening march of the Conference, introduce the keynote speaker and host the opening dinner, as other Presidents had traditionally done. Benson refused even to set foot on campus during the week of the Conference," the suit alleged.

Chancellor Phil DiStefano complained to Butcher, a former friend, that Benson was "always on (his) back" about the conference, the lawsuit said. Benson has been more visible around conference events since Clare's ouster.

The CWA earned a liberal reputation from Higman, its colorful founder, who died in 1995. In more recent years, Clare and her staff worked overtime to attract conservatives. Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer gave the keynote address in 2005. The four-person media panel I moderated in 2015 consisted of two conservatives and two liberals. If someone had kept score of debating points, the conservatives — Mary Katharine Ham and Genevieve Wood — would have won in a walk.

"Maura was removed, as far as one can tell, by administrators who did not attend enough conference events to have a clue what they were doing," wrote Gold, the chairman of the board and founder of SomaLogic Inc.

"Now that the CWA has regular funding from the president's office, which it never did before, my guess is that eventually it will be folded into the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy," said Ramsay Thurber, a former CWA volunteer and staffer. "Maybe that was the plan all along."

The center is home to CU's Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy, a position launched in 2013, five years after Benson's arrival.

When Clare was ousted, Thurber had just begun an ambitious, laborious project to digitize historic, fragile tape recordings of the CWA going back to the 1950s. It's not clear what happened to that archives project.

Clare recently sold her Boulder condo and stepped down from the job she held for the past year as senior development officer at the Tennyson Center for Children in Denver, a home for abused and neglected kids.

"She has a unique gift of connecting with both children and donors who care about kids and want to find creative ways to contribute," said Tennyson CEO Ned Breslin. "She spent an enormous amount of time mentoring and supporting the kids here. She's been a critical part of kids' healing. I'm going to miss her to death. She's one of those people who moves the needle on so much. Her impact here was huge."

Clare, who called 2015 "horrific" in her statement to the Camera, will be leaving Colorado in the next few days to make a fresh start back east. The ex-cons are planning a reunion for this summer.

"We had a spirit, a togetherness, nobody wants to give up," said Jackson-Sevy, who now works at a Boulder startup. "I think Maura deserves a lot more from the university for what she put into the conference and how she was treated in the end, but the fact that it's over and she won is super satisfying."

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